I hear alot of people talking about waiting a few months for the price to drop. Yeah you could do that. Or you could think about it this way:

You're essentially going to be using this phone for two years. Granted, you could buy another phone off contract but for the sake of argument let's assume it's 2 years. You shouldn't look at the price of the phone as an upfront cost. Consider the cost of the phone over 24 months. Let's not consider your phone plan costs because I'm assuming that it remains the same when you upgrade from the 900 to the 1020.

When you look at it that way, we're talking about a monthly cost of that phone for 24 months being about $12.50/mo. Now ask yourself: Am I willing to pay $13/mo to use this awesome phone?

Now let's make some assumptions. In two months, the price will drop by about $50 (assumption). That drops the cost to $250. 250/24 = $10. You saved $3/mo on a 24 month contract by waiting two months. Is it worth it? To some yes, to others no. That's based on your own threshold.

Again, these are assumptions and this is taking a look at the phone based on the entirety of a 2 year contract.

BUT! There's a way to save money on the phone immediately. When the phone is available for pre-order, call AT&T retention department threatening to cancel. Talk about how other companies have the same quality devices and same quality network and they're offering you deals on them. Talk about how you were thinking about the Galaxy S4 or the HTC one and maybe jumping ship to Verizon or Sprint. Tell them that you have a ridiculous offer with them (maybe make up a number...say bill credit of $30 for 6 months plus a free S4). Ask them that the only way you'd consider staying is if they can offer some sort of bill credit AND knock the price off the Lumia 1020. You like the phone, but you don't "$299 + tax" like it.

They'll put you on hold, talk to the manager, come back and possibly offer you some combo of bill credit and/or (likely or) knock off $50-100 on upgrade price to 1020. Reason is because, and you probably know this, AT&T makes their money by locking customers to a 2 year contract and then shafting them as hard as they can on monthly bills. They couldn't care less what phone you use and how much you buy it for.

$299 is just a way for them achieve whatever margin they can on hardware, and then be able to create attractive promotions in a couple of months.

Conclusion: I personally would be more than happy to pay $299 for this phone but I would certainly try calling ATT retentions to see if I can get a better deal.

I love this sentence. So this phone is only really worth buying if you spend time threatening to cancel your contract to get the price reduced.

How about they just, yknow, LOWER the price from day 1?

There are a couple of reasons why they wouldn't. 90% of customers don't try and negotiate the price of the phone. So why would ATT simply reduce the price of a phone for them, when 90% (and likely higher) will pay full MSRP? How much do you think Nokia is selling those devices to ATT for?

Sure, ATT doesn't make profit off of the handsets they sell but it does help to make some margin on there. Do you know why? They've been doing it for years, and people have been buying them for years. They have no reason to change the pricing model of either $99/150/199/299 for their phones. Considering that the Lumia 1020 is a "hero" phone and has features that can't be matched by anybody else, Nokia decided to price it that way to ATT, and ATT decided to price it that way to customers.

"LOWER the price from day 1?". Come on man. We're talking about months and thousands of dollars put into understanding what the best price point is that will attract the most consumers and provide the highest profit. Yeah it sucks, but until that 90% of customers start demanding a lower price, AT&T wouldn't do jack about it. That's the reality.

Depends on how much use you're going to get out of the camera. No kids myself but several of my in-laws have kids and my girl takes pictures/videos of them constantly. To put things into perspective, a 64GB microSD card still wouldn't be enough to hold all her photos. Needless to say, the camera will get a lot of use, much more from her than it would from me.

Oh yeah, and 700,000 more apps to chose from. Oh year, it's also 100 dollars less on contract than the 1020. An average camera, and yes, 1020 has an average camera on par with 150 dollar point and shoots. A beast for a phone, average for photographers. I'll complain to AT&T and see if they can lower the price. If they can bring it down to 200 I'll get it, but at 300, no thanks, I can do better.

Nay...$300 is just way too much for contract pricing. People demand 60-80% off...it is just the mindset we have. Now, the $600 (is that the full price?) is a pretty nice deal.

Originally Posted by Winning Guy

I want to be able to afford getting the camera grip or the wireless charging cover. Can both be used simultaneously?

It does not appear so, although I would have never expected them BOTH to fit. Your better question would be "does the Camera Grip include Qi Charging?". These are the best details I've found on the PD-95G so far (Hint, that is the camera grip model number, haha)

If someone is in the market for both a good phone and a quality camera, then yay, of course. In addition to being cheaper overall, in many ways, it's a lot better to have them together than to have two separate devices. Particularly for men who do not have purses with them all the time to carry a camera in.